She's doing so well! Tentative hopping slowly turning into something definitely approaching walking even though it can only be practised on carpet and closely supervised so almost all of the day Rose is still careering around on her crutches but it's getting more confident every day. In physio she will stand on her right leg supporting herself with one hand and count to ten - this is absolutely HUGE and means that although she's putting as much weight as she can through one small hand she is definitely weight bearing through the leg too. The more she does this the straighter the leg will get, the straighter the leg gets the easier it will be to walk etc etc.
It's all going in the right direction and she is moving so much more independently around the house to get to whatever she wants - it may not be pretty or particularly dignified but she's moving! I am so proud of her - it's taken months and months of really hard work and she's got months and months more to come but she's on the way. Physio is not fun - at worst it hurts and at best it's really, really boring! This month's goals are - hopping on her right leg on the mini trampoline, getting up and downstairs with no adult supervision and no crutches, standing on her right leg to count to 20 (nearly there!) and stepping through with her left leg to make a proper walking pattern rather than such a big stagger. Each month they look unachievable but she's ticked off all last month's goals so no reason why she won't just keep on going now. Especially not with the heavy incentive of a long shopping list from Build a Bear, American Girl, Sylvanian Families... I am learning the hard way how expensive this is getting. I told her yesterday that if she straightened her leg enough to hold her toes for ten I would give her a five pound note - confident that the day before she'd been about three inches off. She did it straightaway...
Keeping Rose moving when she's not on her bottom in a classroom is my whole focus now - so far this week we have swum after morning school on Monday and hired giant tricyles in the park on Tuesday afternoon. Retraining Rose away from every waking minute being spent flat on her back in front of a TV screen is a long process - there are months of hospital life to unpick in her brain but she is slowly becoming an active little girl again. Kicking, splashing, cycling, walking, crawling, standing up in the kitchen, I don't care what she's doing but she has to be doing something! And the more she does the more she is rediscovering the thrill of just being busy doing stuff.
As well as celebrating her fabulous Sinead O'Connor hairstyle (definitely almost an inch long now) with the first hair wash (whole family in the bathroom with camera - how sad are we) we are also marvelling at the return of her gorgeous eyelashes and eyebrows and the beginnings of a tiny bit of weight gain. Rose is coming back. She's loving her trips to school and secretly so am I - I have really just swapped one institution for another and am now as embroiled in hymn practice, wet break and the class gossip as once I was in ward life. Leaving her there will be hard but I know I have to start soon as the realisation is slowly dawning that I am there more for me than for her. She's fine and in reality each time she has fallen over I have been about six inches away from her and still not managed to stop it happening. I am about as much use to her in the corridor as I am at home and I am only ever going to need time to change into my Superman outfit and fly up the hill to her school to be there when suddenly it's not all going okay. I need to relax my grip on the umbilical cord just a bit - aaaggghhh I really, really don't want to. Her community physio team are coming to school next week for a meeting to discuss how to facilitate Rose's time at school better and who will fill the gaps I am filling - subtext how to wean Rose's mother off Rose...
So day to day Rose is loving her life and the little daily picture is rosy, rosy, rosy. The big picture is the big unknown and the reality of that reduces me to tears at least once a day when caught off guard - fear, leg pain, looking too far ahead or too far back can all drain my happiness in a moment. Suddenly the enormity of the past, present and future will rear up in the middle of all the benign fabulousness just to make sure I never take a single second with Rose for granted. And I never ever will.
